Problem hosting static content for my plugins

[undef.de]

I have currently the problem that my hoster does not want to provide my http://static.undef.name anymore, because of the massive amount of requests (30 requests/second between 17:00 - 23:00 o'clock CET) and the resulting traffic (1,5 TB/month). On that domain i host all my static content for my Plugins for XAseco/XAseco2 and UASECO. The account i use is a shared host and i'm able to understand why the hoster complain about that.

I'm not willing to upgrade to a higher and much more cost intensive account to only provide my graphics/sounds for other serveradmins, so i have only limited possibilities:

1. I do not provide the static content anymore, the serveradmin has to provide that content for his players himself

or

2. The serveradmin has to donate an amount for each server (every year) to make me able to provide the static contents for him on a central place

Please tell me your ideas/solutions...

[oliverde8]

Hi,
Sorry to hear that . Woulnd't it be better to try and diminish the number of custom Images used by replacing them with the existing quads? I know it isn't as nice but I think it might be better.

For many server hosters, hosting is already hard enought that would make I think 1 hard for them. The second alternative will be costly for the users. And wouldn't it be very tricky for you to put it in place so that only the admins that donated can use it? Ip tables to be maintained....

I think both solution might harm the servers, specially the casual server admins.

[Rots]

1. If you could make it easy, why not... everyone hosting a dedicated gameserver has a webserver.

2. How much are we talking about? (a dedicated plan upgrade) And how much per server then?


Why not maybe offering an Uaseco (non hosted statics) and Ua$eco pro, little donation, hosted stuff. To protect data access, each donation has an ID or token associated and using this ID on a server will grant you access to static content. I'm not a programmer but i'm thinking on some kind of user-agent authentication via curl with given ID to allow/prevent http access. You would have a database of allowed user agents.

[TMarc]

Static stuff should always reside static at each dedicated server in other words, it should be installed and not always downloaded.
Because this creates redundant traffic, nearly like spam.
If there is need for connection to your server, then only to check if there are updates, and for your server usage statistics.

Of which fee amount were you thinking?
Popular servers, which probably have some return of invest, should donate to server controller and plugin creators.
But they already have to pay for the hosting.

The day server hosters have to pay for controller, plugin, content, they will charge the players, not only in planets, but with money.

On the other hand, we have to see that Maniaplanet was conceived from the beginning as "real-money free" system, only with the planets, to alow everyone to participate.

Not easy...

[reaby]

Well, I got the same problem with eXpansion static contents server provider, and had to change it to use ingame quads. The main issue was that it generated quite a lot requests for small images, so data-transferred per request was quite low. Still the data amounts were quite alot, and well it's way less users than UNDEF has for RE and UASECO.

Hi,
Woulnd't it be better to try and diminish the number of custom Images used by replacing them with the existing quads? I know it isn't as nice but I think it might be better.

Well, UASECO has quite alot of custom assets, like the tachometer, and many icons, also sounds, I don't see any chance that UASECO UI would work without the custom content.

Static stuff should always reside static at each dedicated server in other words, it should be installed and not always downloaded.

That would be the best solution indeed, but using "file://media/images/foobar.png" doesn't fetch the images from dedicated, but from client titlepack/gamedata folders.

One possibility would be ofc to have the graphical and sound files in a zip, the serverhoster must host himself..
But still there will be the problem of alot of request versus little data transferred. To make adding custom graphical images hoster friendly, i see only one solution, but its a lot to code: Sprite-sheets actually can be used already with "manialink ver 2" frames, there is the clipping possibility, but using lot of frames will make the rendering of manialink damn much slower. Also every graphical asset you want to add needs to be capsulated inside a frame then calculate the rectangle for it, etc etc... will be much difficult to use.

Best solution would be to have it all statically, but currently it's only possible with titlepacks.
I don't see any point: titlepacks for eXpansion, UAseco, Xaseco, etc... which would divide the community even more.

The day server hosters have to pay for controller, plugin, content, they will charge the players, not only in planets, but with money.

Controllers, plugins... Well, i don't see any possibility to ask money for controller or plugin, the moment uaseco or eXpansion or any other plugin starts to cost, it propably will never get used. It's hard enough for now to get new plugins out there to be used on servers..

On the other hand, we have to see that Maniaplanet was conceived from the beginning as "real-money free" system, only with the planets, to alow everyone to participate.

For content creators and server admins, there is not much of a use for planets. There is just nothing we could spend the planets. Personally seeing a "Donate with Paypal" buttons on some servers makes me sad, since I've already paid for the game, why do I need to pay for playing on the server.

[TMarc]

you're right with all your points, reaby.
Players simply don't see that server hosting is actually costly.
Some are willing to donate planets, some are even willing to donate money.
But all those who are only playing with demo accounts "bcause it's free" will never pay anything, furthermore, they will complain aout many things which are not working, before thinking themselves.

One possible solution would be a change in the maniaplanet scripting, that would allow to download content from the hosted server.

http://{server}/static/image.png

[hackie]

Why not asking nadeo to host some stuff ?

I mean without You guy's we didn't have such beautifull server controllers.
We only had boring empty server screans.

SO , NADEO HELP OUT HERE.

[askuri]

I don't think NADEO will do this. It's amazing enaugh they provide the XML-RPC API, which allows Servercontrollers. That also costed a lot of time, which led to high costs.

My idea is to make it possible to volunteer for hosting:
The UASECO server remains and still serves some content, but it also gives advice for other UASECO clients, to choose another static content mirror. Every volunteering hoster should be able to choose, how many UASECO clients can use it. There could be a number of average player on the servers. For example server A has avg. of 1.5 players, while B has 12 players. If a static content mirror is only able to provide traffic for avg. of 6 players, then server B with 12 players would not use it, because it has a lot of visitors.
A new server should be selected each hour by its load.
I know this is really statistical reasearch, but we don't have another option, since we don't know which content is in the players cache.
But basicly, even if we'd only had 3 volunteers hosting quarter of undefs current server, 4 times as much player can use it. That's a lot!

BTW: I volunteer for hosting. I got a traffic flat, but let's see when the first email from my hoster is incoming
And I'm sure my clan (FIRE) will volunteer, too

EDIT:
Maybe it would be better to force the big commercial hosters to provide their on mirror (which can be private)

[TheBigG.]

Hi undef,
if i remember right the music plugin for xaseco/uaseco used a path below the server's UserData directory from where it did provide the music to the players, is it possible to use that for images too?

Else i woud be happy to provide you some free hosting.

[askuri]

Sure it's possible to use. But it would require each player to download the files and put them there (and update them, when undef changes something)